I've always said that what I look for above all else in movies is to have fun, because i want life to be simple and fun so i like my movies to be that way as well, but with that being said I obviously enjoy drama and thought provoking material from time to time, so i'll watch something more artistically engaging, something that makes me think about society or life or purpose or something like that. However a lot of these movies I just feel are very pretentious, and not because I don't get it, but because there is no substance past the metaphors. Now you may think that that's a stupid way to put it, the metaphors are the substance, but no they shouldn't be. A metaphor that people often use to describe these elements of movies is to compare it to a meal, the deep and complex material would be the nice steak dinner while the pretty visuals and entertainment aspect is the chocolate pudding afterwards. I personally feel like it should be the other way around, the barebones of a movie should be the impressive visuals and the enjoyable characters and story, once you start thinking about it is when you should realise it's much more complex than just being visually stimulating. Because when a movie puts the metaphor first, if you don't get the metaphor, then it's a bad movie to you.
Here are some movies that I think did it right, American Psycho for example set up a very entertaining protagonist, created some interesting conversations and had a distinct atmosphere so by the end of the movie, you wanted to analyse it because you were having a good time. Enemy had great performances, unique imagery and a shit your pants reveal at the end that you have to find out what it all means. 2001: A Space Odyssey, even though I don't like it, i still respect for being a great example of a movie that can be both the steak and the pudding. It has a lot to say about humanity, technology the course we've taken as a society, but it also has groundbreaking visuals, a great score and a scary antagonist of HAL 9000. I just don't like it because seriously, the movie does not need to be that slow paced, the fuck Kubrick, the fuck?
But what's great is that these days it's not just the arthouse movies that can be insightful, more and more movies are making a blend of the two. Robocop, The Matrix, The Lego Movie, hell, South Park does it better than most, yet most people just brush it off as crude and offensive humour when really it's clever satire mixed with insightful commentary. The idea of high class material being the only source of complex ideas and clever imagery and deep symbolism is an archaic point of view, films can be entertaining and artistic at the exact same time, if a movie is only one then i don't think it's unfair to criticise it on that. If Transformers is just going to be explosions with no depth to it, i'll call it out, but at the same time if Meek's Cutoff is complete bare bones with nothing of value to show me then i'll call that out as well.
By the way, Tree of Life sucks.
-Danny
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